Introduction Generatepress Set Up A Blog Page

Over the past 10 decades, I have used a lot of different WordPress themes and have been very disappointed. Up till recently, I was using MyThemeShop, which was pretty excellent. But I still had to perform a great deal of customization to allow it to perform and work the way I wanted it to. A few weeks ago I decided to provide GeneratePress a try, and let me just say, it is undoubtedly the best WordPress theme I’ve discovered in a decade . I had been blown away and am now moving all of my sites to GeneratePress. I will go into exactly why in my comprehensive GeneratePress review under. And if you are wondering, yes I have tried Genesis, Astra, OceanWP, Avada, X theme, Divi as well as several other lightweight and thicker multi-purpose themes. Generatepress Set Up A Blog Page

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

GeneratePress Evaluation

GeneratePress is a free WordPress theme created by Tom Usborne, a developer from Canada. I’ve actually seen it for years in the WordPress repository. Most of you know that I’m fairly picky when it comes to web performance, and so I tend to dismiss everything from the repository. Typically because a great deal of stuff on there isn’t that great, or not encouraged for long. Nonetheless, in this case, this was a mistake. The motif currently has over half a million downloads, 80,000+ active installs, with over 500 5-star ratings. So clearly Tom is doing something right here.

I Really installed the free version of the motif and in a matter of 15 minutes bought the superior version. I could tell right off the bat, the developer was thinking exactly how I was imagining a theme should work. And I’ll go into that more below, but let us first look at a number of the features. I’m going to be covering the premium version of the theme, since it’s worth very penny. In fact, Tom, in the event that you ever read this and are visiting Scottsdale, Arizona, coffees on me.

Features

Super lightweight and fast. Modular design allowing you to enable/disable things you don’t need running. This is one of the biggest reasons I adore GeneratePress.

Responsive, looks fantastic across all devices.

Schema built-in, for better outcomes in SERPs.

Dramatic integration with all the WordPress Customizer. I haven’t been a fan of this customizer in the past, but Tom does it correctly.

Compatible with popular plugins, Yoast SEO, WooCommerce, EDD, BuddyPress, bbPress, and WPML. Great browser service back to IE8.

Additionally, it works great with the popular fast-growing Elementor page builder. If you would like to dive into even more customizations, these really are a terrific combo. I’ve also read that individuals using Beaver Builder have had success.

Translation ready.

Font wonderful built-in.

A lot of hooks and filters that make it great for developers.

Excellent active service from the developer. On average, 3 updates per month.

The Documentation is also unbelievable. Besides have good documentation on their website, the subject has been around long enough that everything I Googled throughout the setup procedure was found within a few seconds from their own forum.

Going Deep Into GeneratePress

Now it’s Time for the fun part! I test a new theme right from the box with no customizations to just see how fast the base is. This tells me a lot of what I could expect by the time I add everything for this. Running the stock GeneratePress WordPress theme on Kinsta hosting clocked in at a whopping 265 ms loading time. I was quite impressed.

One Thing I was worried about with GeneratePress was that the modular layout was going to produce a whole lot of big files, but that is not the case. You can tell that Tom literally worked hard on making sure that every record loaded in GeneratePress is as little as possible. Together with HTTP/2, the number of documents isn’t as significant. But the dimensions is! Have a peek at a few of the core GeneratePress files below:

/generatepress/css/unsemantic-grid. min.css 2.9 KB

/generatepress/style. css 7.1 KB

/generatepress/css/mobile. min.css 1.6 KB

/generatepress/js/navigation. min.js 1.1 KB

/generatepress/js/dropdown. min.js 1.5 KB

This is a developer that cares about functionality! And I have Seen exactly the same during each of the premium add-ons. They are literally as small as you can possibly get them. In fact, Font Awesome is most likely the largest file contained. And that isn’t even his. Together with Font Awesome 5 arriving around the corner, we can expect this to secure smaller also.

The premium add-ons Are setup in what I would call a modular design. It is possible to activate/deactivate whatever you aren’t using to guarantee they do not load on your website. As the co-developer of the perfmatters plugin which has a script manager built-in, I felt right at home for this. Everything ought to be made this way.

If You are curious, I am using the next add-ons on this website:

Website

Colors

Copyright

Hooks

Page Header

Spacing

Typography

No Child Theme Needed

One of The best characteristics of GeneratePress is I no more have to use a young child theme. This makes my life much easier. No longer editing my functions.php or header.php files. I will literally upgrade my GeneratePress theme this exact moment and not lose a single customization. The hooks add-on certainly can help make this possible. It permits you to incorporate custom code/PHP everywhere throughout your WordPress website. Generatepress Set Up A Blog Page

Other Things I Love About GeneratePress

On every Page/post you have a great deal of alternatives. You can alter the sidebar layout and the footer widgets.

You Can quickly swap a page involving the default to a full width page, in addition to disable elements.

The WordPress customizer choices is where GeneratePress really shines! Bear in mind, lots of these choices are permitted from the premium add-ons. I can not show you everything, otherwise, we’d be here all day. However, allow me to show you couple which actually come in handy.

Responsive Columns

Another Plugin I highly suggest grabbing is the free Lightweight Grid Columns. Not to my surprise, this is also made by the same programmer as GeneratePress. It enables you a super simple way to incorporate responsive columns into any page or post. Features include:

Desktop grid width

Tablet grid thickness

Mobile grid thickness

Add Customized courses

Add custom inline designs

Equal height columns

Here is An example under:

You May Want to Also catch his amazing WP Show Posts plugin too. View my featured articles on the sidebar of this website? That’s using the WP Display Posts plugin. I have it set to show posts from a particular”featured” category. You can also get it show past modified/updated posts, recent posts, etc.. I am using the free version and it works terrific.

To Begin, Click here to download GeneratePress.

Sections Add-on

The Sections add-on in the premium edition of GeneratePress allows you to do all sorts of things in terms of design. Consider it like a page builder with no bloat. GeneratePress is certainly not only for blogs! I’m in fact using GeneratePress for our ecommerce website (perfmatters.io) that is operating Easy Digital Downloads. Feel free to check it out. But as you can see below, it looks nothing like a site.

Speed Tests

For all those Of those that are regular readers, you probably didn’t even notice that I changed the whole theme that powers woorkup.com. It just took me about an hour for GeneratePress to mimic my MyThemeShop theme that I had spent annually customizing. Here’s a comparison under.

woorkup.com Old MyThemeShop Theme

My older MyThemeShop theme was already pretty fast, but I invested a great deal of time scrutinizing it. In reality, I’ve gotten a great deal of emails from you guys asking me to publish all of my customizations. My advice today is, just get GeneratePress!

woorkup.com New GeneratePress Theme

With the New GeneratePress motif I was able to attain faster speeds and 600 fewer lines of code! And remember, I don’t have a kid theme. Each of the customizations were created using the awesome GP hooks and snippets plugin (both CSS and PHP).

Like the WordPress theme I’ve working on woorkup? You’re in luck. Tom asked if he could create a copy of woorkup for the brand new GeneratePress site library. I am pleased to let you know that you can now put in my woorkup motif on your own GeneratePress website with just a click! It’s known as the Marketer motif. Get started using a great blog design immediately.

brianjackson.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I Moved within my personal site, brianjackson.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a motif from Array Themes. It’s a pretty basic minimum website, since I do not use it to get much. As you can see it already loaded pretty fast.

brianjackson.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to replicate the entire look 100 percent in GeneratePress in under an hour. And since you can see it loads even faster! Amazing. I was even able to get rid of a few plugins which weren’t needed because of GP.

forgemedia.io Old Array Theme’s Theme

Additionally, I Moved over our business website, forgemedia.io, to GeneratePress. Previously I had been using a theme from Array Themes. It’s a fairly basic minimal site, as we simply use it for our LLC. Since you can see it loaded pretty fast. Generatepress Set Up A Blog Page

forgemedia.io New GeneratePress Theme

I had been Able to move everything over and get it looking just how I needed it in under one hour. And as you can see it loads even faster! Amazing. I was able to eliminate a total of four plugins and it dropped my whole page burden 2x!

I can’t express my Excitement about locating GeneratePress and I’m moving over all of my sites to it (which includes several EDD e-commerce websites ). After I have my 9 sites all running in GP without any child topics, my life is going to be a breeze! The developer has restored my faith in multi-purpose subjects , which when done the right way, can actually perform quicker.

And The best news isI now have a thousand more options to pick from than I did before.

What GeneratePress Is Great For…

GeneratePress Is the ideal option for performance-focused users who want to have the ability to customize and control exactly how their site looks.

You Can make GeneratePress do pretty much anything. And because GeneratePress has a focus on performance, the website that you build will have a great base to make it load fast.

Since Of that, those who assemble WordPress websites for a living love GeneratePress. They’ll normally pair it with a WordPress page builder and use it for literally any type of site.

However GeneratePress Might Not Be A Good Combination If…

…you Need something that will immediately look perfect from the box.

For Example, if you know you want to produce a style blog, you may be happier picking out a niche theme that is developed exclusively for fashion bloggers.

Even though GeneratePress has gotten a great deal simpler to use, as a result of its pre-built Website Library, GeneratePress still seems very barebones if you first install it.

So To create GeneratePress look how you would like it to, you’ll most likely need to go in and customize things. And though the substantial benefit of GeneratePress is how customizable it is, some users, particularly casual users, don’t like having to make those changes .

GeneratePress Features That Make It Unique

Here Are a few of the particular characteristics that clarify why GeneratePress is so popular.

Plenty Of Customization Options From The Real-Time WordPress Customizer

Past Functionality, another area where GeneratePress does nicely is its customization choices.

GeneratePress Uses the WordPress Customizer for customization, and this can be convenient as you will have the ability to see all of the changes that you make in real time.

The Free variant of GeneratePress provides you decent possibilities, but if you have GeneratePress Premium, you will be able to customize pretty much everything about your website.

For Example, if you go into the Layout area, you may configure comprehensive settings for your:

• Header — you can move your header around and change its own styling
• Navigation — GeneratePress gives you two different navigation options, including sticky menus
• Sidebar layout — you can use one or two sidebars
• Blog post design — such as featured image size, metadata, etc..
• Footer layout — like the number of widgets to add

Similarly, That the Typography place lets you control the font to get each and every element on your website, including buttons:

And You also get a detailed region to control the color of each and every element on your site.

All In all, GeneratePress will give you a lot more customization choices from the WordPress Customizer than most other topics. This amount of detail might be a bit overwhelming if you’re a newcomer. But as soon as you understand how the settings come together, you will have full control over how your site appears.

Optimized Performance And Fast Page Load Times

Around All of its attributes, GeneratePress consistently includes a focus on excellent performance and tidy code. The whole theme is less than 30 kB, and it will be about as small as you’ll ever find for a WordPress theme. Even most other optimized WordPress themes are still 200+ kB. And a few badly coded topics can even surpass 1 MB!

GeneratePress Also has no code dependencies, which helps you avoid the render obstructing error that Google Pagespeed Insights often mentions.

Place That together, and you get a superfast-loading theme. How fast? To give you a sense, I conducted a small test.

First, I put up a vacant website utilizing a haphazard popular WordPress.org theme (Envo Magazine). After testing its performance with Pingdom, it:

• Had a performance grade of 77
• Loaded in 1.05 seconds
• Had a page size of 243.9 kB
• Had 15 requests

That’s Not bad in any way! But GeneratePress can do better.

Next, I triggered GeneratePress on the same test website without altering anything else. Here’s how GeneratePress did:

• Had a performance tier of 87, 10 points better
• Loaded in 666 ms, ~37% quicker
• Had a page size of 26.8 kB, ~90% smaller
• Had 9 requests, ~40% less

If You do the exact same test with different themes, you’ll continue to find that GeneratePress is one of the fastest-loading WordPress themes in existence. Generatepress Set Up A Blog Page

Other Helpful Premium Extensions, Plus Much Modular Approach

Past Giving you more style controls in the WordPress Customizer, GeneratePress Premium also comes with a lot of other useful features such as:

• Elements — a exceptional feature that lets you create customized hooks, page headers, or layout templates.
• Page Header — allows you create a unique page header on a per-page basis.
• Sections — this is sort of like lightweight page construction. It lets you create different”sections” onto a page, each with their own design and column settings.

To Remain lightweight, GeneratePress also gives you a modular port where you could pick and choose what features you would like to trigger.

That Way, you don’t have to slow your site down for a feature that you’ll never use.

Pre-Made Starter Sites Make It Easier To Design Your Site

In The last, you had to build GeneratePress sites from a blank canvas no matter what, which made the theme difficult for casual users to install.

Earlier In 2018, though, the programmer added a new Website Library feature for GeneratePress Premium users which lets you easily import any one of the 25+ pre-built demo sites.

You Can import them directly from the WordPress dashboard.

Yes this site still uses GeneratePress! All I did was click a couple buttons to import a presentation site.

Page-Level Settings Provide You Detailed Control Over Each Bit Of Content

With Most themes, every page and post will use the very same configurations for the most part. You might have some custom templates or formats — however you don’t have very much control beyond that.

GeneratePress Changes that by providing you a new Design meta box for each and every post and page:

You Can use this meta box to:

• Change how many sidebars your site uses, or the sidebar orientation (like changing the sidebar from right to left)
• Choose how many footer widgets to use
• Disable certain components, like your header, navigation menu, post featured image, post title, or footer
• Create a special”container” to your page builder

Where These controls would be the most useful is if you are using a WordPress page builder.

By Disabling certain elements, you’re in a position to produce the correct baseline for your own page builder design, making it easy to create custom content as needed. Generatepress Set Up A Blog Page

GeneratePress Pricing: Cheap And Works On Unlimited Sites

The Core GeneratePress motif is available for free at WordPress.org.

That said, If you are seriously interested in using GeneratePress, I feel you should purchase the GeneratePress Premium plugin, as that’s what makes the theme so flexible. The free version does not give you nearly as many configurations in the WordPress Customizer. And you will also lose out on the premade Site Library.

GeneratePress Premium is also still fairly reasonably priced. It costs only $39.95, which provides you use on unlimited sites. You will also get a 40% discount if you want to renew to keep on receiving support and upgrades after the first year (you can, obviously, continue using GeneratePress after the first year without renewing — you just won’t receive any more updates).

When You consider that the typical premium WordPress theme will usually cost around $60, GeneratePress provides a fantastic price.

Summary

As I said, I do not believe GeneratePress is for everyone.

If You desire a niche-specific theme, you can probably save time by buying a theme that satisfies your requirements for your niche from day one.

However, If you’re ready to spend time changing settings, GeneratePress’ mode controls give you the flexibility to turn it into any type of WordPress site. Or, you may even be able to find a starter site that fits your needs to save some time.

Additionally, It is among the fastest-loading WordPress topics that you will find. So if you’re seeking the best performance possible, using GeneratePress as your WordPress site’s base is a great choice.

If You combine it with fast-loading hosting, you should have no problem making your site load in under one minute. Generatepress Set Up A Blog Page

To Get started, Click here to download GeneratePress.